Moving Your Office Without Losing SEO Rankings

Your Businesses Local SEO

Will changing my office location negatively affect my localised SEO? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. However,you the outcome can be determined by the course of action you decide to take.

The Importance of NAP

Name, address and phone number (or NAP), is really important for your website’s SEO if you want to rank well organically in local search results. Without this information, Google only knows who you are as a brand and not where you are located. So, if internet users are looking for local businesses offering a particular product or service, an absence of NAP will mean your localised SEO performance will be affected.

It’s fair to say most businesses understand the importance of localising their businesses with the correct NAP on their site and within citations, but moving office can throw a spanner in the works with your rankings, if it means changing your NAP.

Content Accuracy

Whilst business owners prefer to have all their content accurate and up-to-date, it doesn’t always pay to be so ‘anally retentive’. Especially not when doing the right thing can actually have a negative impact! Changing your office location details can result in a loss of rankings as well as a loss of online business reviews.

Short Distance Moves

If you are moving to a location around the corner in Folkestone, arguably an address change may not be worth it, when you could end up having to build your local SEO power from the ground all over again. Often businesses leave their existing citations with the old address and although they update their address on their site, they create a page on their website outlining the old address, to match up to the information in their citations. This is a lot like getting strategic with accuracy and we can’t say we disagree.

Long Distance Moves

If you’re moving a substantial distance from your current location, then the chances are, you will be wanting to rank locally for a new area in Kent or beyond, in which case, starting again is inevitable.

But you may wish to consider the previous tip if you only sell your goods and services online and rarely get customers visit your office.

If customers do visit your office premises, certainly the case for commercial outfits and shops, we recommend submitting a change of address to all your local citations (or via Moz Local if you use this). Granted, you may need to start again with local rankings, but at least your information will be accurate, which for moves of substantial distance, is the recommended action.

The Last Word

Ultimately, it’s up to you on what action you take with your localised SEO but we can’t deny that Google does behave a little harshly when it comes to moving your business location. An innocent office move gets treated like a new business listing, rather than an opportunity to carry over the online credibility it has gained.

Whilst keeping your old address may seem like unorthodox practice, it does avoid having to start again with your localised SEO.

Whitefish Marketing are a Folkestone based digital marketing company, serving clients in Kent and the south-east. For an in-depth discussion on how can help your business with localised SEO, please get in touch on 01303 720 288.